Editorial: The UK is set to buck the trend and elect a government that is pro mass immigration

​Almost all political observers expect Labour to win a House of Commons overall majority this week.

The Labour polling lead over the Conservativesis still about 20%, even in polls carried out since the debate last week in which Rishi Sunak was perceived to have done better than Sir Keir Starmer.

In many general elections the Conservatives have done better than the polls suggested they would, including the 1997 contest, which Labour won in a landslide. The ultimate victory margin, while large, was much smaller on the day than the polls had forecast. So even if Labour falls well short of its poll numbers on Thursday, it will win a landslide. If the Tories somehow triumph, it will be the biggest polling error in recent UK political history.

A landslide will have far reaching consequences for key issues, such as this column noted last week re welfare (Labour shows no inclination to bring down costs). It will also be significant re the Irish Sea border.

But it is on immigration that the Labour win might have most impact. Key Conservative figures of the last decade – David Cameron, William Hague, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Ruth Davidson among them – were not only pro immigration, some wore it as a badge of pride. They seemed to think it showed them to be cosmopolitan as well as pragmatic about falling birth rates among the existing population. But as France’s emerging latest election results show, people on both sides of the Atlantic are outraged by out-of-control borders and the damage it inflicts on a national culture, the pressure it puts on services and the threat it poses to the employment prospects of some of the poorest people in these countries.

Yet while other nations are electing politicians who will get tough about this extraordinary influx of people, the UK is set to elect a government that does not seem to be fundamentally bothered by open borders.